Gone but not forgotten: Whitney Pier landmark demolished

SYDNEY — A Whitney Pier landmark is now history. The building at the corner of Laurier Street and Victoria Road that once housed the Whitney Pier Athletic Club was demolished by MacDonald Trucking in less than half an hour on Monday morning.

The 100-year-old building had been vacant for a number of years, but Cape Breton music fans will likely shed a tear over the demolition of a club that, under the ownership of the late Fred Tomie, gave Cape Breton musicians one of the few nightspots in the industrial area to play their own music.

Legendary Cape Breton performers like Buddy and the Boys, Sam Moon and Matt Minglewood all had an opportunity to play their original music on Tomie's stage in early stages of their careers.

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The experience of growing up as a boy in the Pier was collimated with the experience of becoming a young man at "Fred's". The other clubs and bars in the Pier had an effect on the growth via experience, but nothing was close to Fred's. It was grade 8, I remember having walked passed Fred's and decided one Friday evening to pass for 19. This was part to do with the fact that I had the two dollars ha... and the persona....ha, whatever it was I got the education beyond my grade 8 class all in one evening. To see a band play great blues in front of my eyes and then to dance with women twice my age and not to mention the fact that an Export was on the table with my name on it, all this was cool, but to see and witness the flow of a Joint move without any hindrance was free and uplifting. I tip my hat to Fred with the highest degree of respect. No place was there or will there be in the World like Fred Tom's.

The mood and reaction to the demolition of these properties in the CBRM is slowly beginning to change as reality sets in. The mood is more somber now. People are beginning to realize that barring an economic turnaround on the scale of the arrival of Dominion Coal and Steel at the beginning of the last century, replacements for these buildings will never materialize. What you see is what you get. Mind the gap.